Will the Internet fragment?: Sovereignty, globalization and cyberspace

Abstract

economic activity, it has also aided the move of neoliberalism even deeper into the self and has reinforced the powers of the carceral state; that is, it has enabled another response to the financial crisis in the form of surveillance capitalism. By transforming data into wealth, surveillance capitalism moves neoliberalism into the individual herself. Not only are her most intimate interactions, those with her friends and family, her thoughts and bodily processes (such as sleep) monetized, but she is also urged to use these tools against herself and others in the arena of the market. She can obsessively track and manage her productivity, create and curate her public image. Yet, what she would find perhaps impossible is imagining a public space where such metrics have been rendered meaningless. Cities often use the militarized tools of surveillance capitalism against their own citizens: facial recognition, CCTV cameras, drones, and artificial intelligence. Such systems are now global, originating in one place, often the United States, and ported into far-off cities and cultures where their darker potential is more likely to be realized in the light of weaker institutions to preserve civil liberties. In the end, whether the citizens of the global city are likely to leverage technology to liberate themselves from capitalism’s logic and engender new political and economic forms, or such technology will instead be used to create a hardened and unmasked version of neoliberalism is not a question Rossi answers. Oneway forward, thoughnot fully developed inRossi’s analysis, is that the progressive left share its successful policy initiatives globally much as neoliberalism managed to spread and replicate itself. Policy innovation seems likely to originate not in the world’s dominant cities, but in struggling urban areas, in the global economy’s periphery, and amongmarginalized and oppressed groupswho nowbear the brunt of neoliberalism’s injustice.What this century ultimately looks like will depend on what those who live in its cities now, and in the near future, choose – or do not choose.